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 Sweden |  United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Diplomatic mission | |
| British Embassy, Stockholm | Swedish Embassy, London |
| Envoy | |
| AmbassadorJudith Gough | AmbassadorTorbjörn Sohlström |
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United Kingdom–Sweden relations (also known asAnglo-Swedish relations orBritish-Swedish relations) (Swedish:Relationer mellan Storbritannien och Sverige orsvensk-brittiska relationer) are relations between theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and theKingdom of Sweden.
Both countries share common membership of theCouncil of Europe, theEuropean Court of Human Rights, theInternational Criminal Court, theJoint Expeditionary Force,NATO, theOECD, theOSCE, theUnited Nations, and theWorld Trade Organization. Bilaterally the two countries have a Double Taxation Convention,[1] a Mutual Defence Agreement,[2] and a Strategic Partnership.[3] Additionally, the United Kingdom holdsObserver status of theBEAC,CBSS andAC.
The earliest wave of migration from present-daySweden, came from theViking invasion of Britain in the year 793 when Viking pagans fromScandinavia (present-dayDenmark,Norway, and Sweden) started raiding and settling around theBritish Isles.[4] Viking raids occurred up and down the largely undefended east coast of England and Scotland during the eighth and ninth centuries. Scandinavian settlements became established over the entire island ofGreat Britain, the most important of which wasJórvík (nowYork).[4] Scandinavian influence is evident in the UK even to this day and many millions of Britons have some Scandinavian heritage (especially inNorthern England,Eastern England,Scotland and theShetland Islands).[5]
Another early recording ofSwedes in England can be found on the so calledEngland runestones which describe Swedish Vikings taking gold,Danegeld, and tributes in England. Almost allRunestones of this period mentioning England are found in modern day Sweden.
One of the earliest mentions of present day Sweden in old English literature comes in the form of theepic poem ofBeowulf. The story is set inScandinavia.Beowulf, a hero of theGeats, (Swedish Viking tribe), comes to the aid ofHrothgar, the king of theDanes, whosemead hall inHeorot has been under attack by a monster known asGrendel. After Beowulf slays him,Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland (Götaland in modern Sweden) and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats adragon but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.
As part of theContinental System, Sweden was forced to declare war on the UK by Napoleon - however theAnglo-Swedish war of 1810–1812 existed only on paper and was entirely bloodless.[6]In theTreaty of Stockholm of 1813, Britain cededGuadeloupe to Sweden in exchange for Swedish support against Napoleon in theWar of the Sixth Coalition and trading rights in major Swedish cities.[7] Swedish rule was brief as the island was ceded to France in the 1814Treaty of Paris.[8]
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, manySwedes emigrated to the United States and the majority of Swedes sailed fromGothenburg toKingston upon Hull before travelling toLiverpool orSouthampton to continue their journey toNorth America.[9] This created a significant Swedish presence in these cities, so much so that Swedish churches were built to cater to the dynamic communities.[10] Although most emigrants eventually left the ports for the US, some remained in Britain and started their new lives a stage early.[10]
TheJoint Expeditionary Force (JEF) is a United Kingdom-led multinational military partnership formed for rapid response and expeditionary operations, primarily focused onNorthern Europe and theBaltic Sea region. The JEF was officially launched as aNATO initiative at the 2014 NATO Wales Summit when seven countries - Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom - signed a foundational Letter of Intent to establish the force. Sweden joined the JEF in the summer of 2017 alongside Finland, expanding the membership to nine nations. In 2021, Iceland became the tenth member.[11]
Since 2022, Sweden, along withFinland, is in a mutual defence treaty with the United Kingdom.[12] In 2022, British Prime MinisterBoris Johnson arrived in Sweden and granted Sweden security assurances for the duration of its NATO membership process.[13] In July 2022, the United Kingdom fully approved Sweden's application forNATO membership.[14]
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TheBritish embassy in North Korea based inPyongyang is located in the same building as theSwedish embassy.
Twoofficial states visits each between UK and Sweden took place during the reign ofElizabeth II. Former KingGustaf VI Adolf andQueen Louise made a visit to Elizabeth between 28 June to 1 July 1954. In return she made an official visit to Sweden visiting Stockholm and Gothenburg between 8 and 10 June 1956.[15] Later on, the current monarchCarl XVI Gustaf made an official visit to the UK between 8 and 11 July 1975. Elizabeth later returned the visit between 25 and 28 May 1983.
KingCarl XVI Gustaf is about290th in line to the British throne as he is a descendant ofVictoria of the United Kingdom through her third son,Prince Arthur.KingCharles III, although a descendant ofCharles IX of Sweden is notin line to the Swedish throne, as theSwedish Act of Succession limits successors to the descendants of Carl XVI Gustaf.
Other noted British members of theSwedish royal family areChristopher O’Neill who holds a British passport, who is married to the king's daughterPrincess Madeleine. Their three children; Princess Leonore, Prince Nicolas and Princess Adrienne are entitled to British nationality on descent of their father. Notable previous British members of the Swedish royal family include Welsh-bornPrincess Lilian, who was the king's aunt-in-law, and his paternal grandmotherPrincess Margaret of Connaught, the first wife of the king's grandfatherGustaf VI Adolf. King Gustaf VI Adolf continued with the British connection, by marrying the German-born Briton,Louise Mountbatten (a maternal aunt of Elizabeth II's husband,Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh) as his second wife. Carl XVI Gustaf's maternal grandfather,Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was by birth a British prince.
TheEarl andCountess of Wessex has represented the British Royal Family in all the recent royal weddings the king's children ofCrown Princess Victoria and Daniel Westling,Princess Madeleine and Christopher O'Neill andPrince Carl Philip and Sofia Hellqvist.
The UK and Sweden have small republican movements, includingRepublic andRepublikanska Föreningen. Which are members of the pan-EuropeanAlliance of European Republican Movements,[16] which is based in Stockholm.[17]
The UK and Sweden are part of theSingle European Sky, hence there are no restrictions between them to operate flights to. Both flag carriersBritish Airways andSAS between them fly between the capitals’ major airports ofLondon-Heathrow toStockholm-Arlanda, SAS also flies from Arlanda toBirmingham,Manchester andEdinburgh. BA and SAS also flies between Heathrow andGothenburg airports, with SAS providing connections to other parts of the country.
Other carriers that fly between the UK and Sweden includeregional andlow-cost carriers. The regional carriers that fly between UK and Sweden areSun-Air which flies from Gothenburg to Manchester.
Low-cost carriers are well established between the UK and Sweden,Norwegian flies fromLondon-Gatwick, Edinburgh, Manchester airports to Arlanda and Gatwick to Gothenburg, with connections to other airports in Sweden.easyJet also flies from Gatwick to Arlanda, plus seasonally toÅre Östersund for skiing and winter holidays.Ryanair flies betweenLondon-Stansted toStockholm-Skavsta,Stockholm-Västerås & Gothenburg, withGothenburg-City,Malmö andSkellefteå airports in the past. Polish airlineEnter Air offers seasonal charter flights toKiruna from eleven British airports.
BA, SAS, Norwegian, easyJet and Ryanair all fly to nearbyCopenhagen airport in Denmark from various British airports, which has easy access by theÖresundståg andSJ trains toScania andSmåland.
In the past, there were regularro-ro ferries betweenGothenburg andNewcastle,Harwich,Immingham andHull done byTor Lines,England-Sweden Line andScandinavian Seaways using such ferries as theMSTor Britannia andMSTor Scandinavia. The plot of the BBCsoapTriangle involved on a ferry between the Harwich and Gothenburg route. Popularity of travelling by ferry over theNorth Sea fell with advent oflow-cost carriers and speedy catamaran services between Harwich andHook of Holland andcross-channel services. Currently commercial port services for freight exist between Harwich and Immingham to Gothenburg.
The UK and Sweden are consideredcultural superpowers as they have given a large amount of cultural influence in the world despite their small size.[peacock prose] Cross-culturally they strongly influence each other due to beingNorthern European countries with a majority of people being non-practicing Protestants, with a notable immigrant population. Sweden is also influenced due to the country's strongknowledge of English as a second language.
Major historical and contemporary British authors' literature are popular in Sweden, such asWilliam Shakespeare,Lewis Carroll,the Brontë sisters,Jane Austen,Beatrix Potter,Charles Dickens,J. R. R. Tolkien &J. K. Rowling. Due to thehigh literary knowledge ofEnglish language, many popular works are available and read in their original text as well as translated versions. Around ten British authors includingRudyard Kipling,T. S. Eliot,Harold Pinter and the current winnerKazuo Ishiguro have all won the respectedNobel Prize in Literature which is awarded by theSwedish Academy. One British-Irish laureateGeorge Bernard Shaw, used his prize money to help set-up and run theAnglo-Swedish Literary Foundation,[18] a foundation which helps literate links between the UK and Sweden.
On the other hand, historical Swedish literature is quite small in the UK. The reason is that the UK is much more historically linked to literature in Central and Southern Europe such as France and Italy and knowledge ofSwedish language is not widely known. However, in the last thirty years. there has been a big interest in Swedish crime thrillers which put the under category ofScandinavian noir, likeHenning Mankell'sKurt Wallander series,Camilla Läckberg and the famousStieg Larsson and hisMillennium series. Sweden encourages English translations of its literature through an organisationThe Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association[19] which provide grants to assist this.
The UK and Sweden are notorious literary readers with high readership of newspapers and magazines. The strength of British news and corporate affairs in Sweden, means that many major publications have a British correspondent includingDagens Nyheter,Göteborgs-Posten & thenews agencyTT. On the other hand, there aren't any British resident correspondents in Sweden and the nearest is the Financial Times' Nordic correspondent who is based in Norway. British media is more highly reliant on special roving correspondents and the TT news agency to give them the news.
Due to small size of the local market and the high level of literacy of English, many British magazines in a wide range of subjects are available in Swedish newsstands likePressbyrån.[20] On the other hand, it is very difficult to purchase Swedish publications in the UK due to near zero knowledge of the Swedish language. The only regular publication of a Swedish language magazine is the Swedish Church's quarterly magazineKyrkobladet.[21]
One highly notable exception to the Swedishpress corp, is the English-language Swedish online tabloidThe Local. This news-site which was started as a weekly e-mail in 2004 by two British expats Paul Rapacioli & James Savage. It has now morphed into the recognised news-site and it is often quoted abroad.
Although it is not immediately apparent, Swedish broadcasting is heavily influenced by the UK. Thepublic broadcasterSveriges Radio (SR) started in 1932, copying the British model of the time of a commercial-free national public broadcaster theBritish Broadcasting Corporation, which was founded in 1926 and funded byan annual user licence. Although specifics have changed greatly over time, the basic set-up remains the same of a commercial-free national public broadcaster of SR,Sveriges Television (SVT) andSveriges Utbildningsradio (UR) paid for by a per household television licence fee. The UK and Sweden have worked together in theETSI, theEBU and theEuropean Union in developing the standards of broadcasting, including theDAB,DVB andIPTV.
The UK was also influential insatellite broadcasting, which helped to establish commercial television in Sweden. The first commercial broadcasting channels such as theSuper Channel, theChildren's Channel andSky Television werefree-to-air and unencrypted in both countries and established alternatives to the national broadcaster, SVT. WhenBritish Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television merged to formBSkyB, BSB's old satellite familyMarcopolo were sold off toNordic Satellite AB, which turned leased space from the renamed Thor 1 satellite to help createTV3, Sweden's first commercial broadcaster. Due to legal restrictions in advertising, TV3 was initially "broadcast" from its London headquarters, and even today all of the channels of TV3's parent companyViasat are broadcast from the UK despite a considerable relaxation since then of the rules on commercial broadcasting. This leads to an unusual situation where advertising on the service is regulated by theAdvertising Standards Authority of the UK and not the domestic regulator, Reklamombudsmannen. TV3's broadcasting from London is also noted, as it helped start the career of British-based SwedeUlrika Jonsson as one of her first jobs in television was aweather forecaster for the channel.
The UK and Sweden are active in the field ofinternational broadcasting. In radio, the English language service of theBBC World Service is available in Sweden by satellite on theHotbird 13B.[22] The BBC's own Swedish-language service was shut down in March 1961. The weekday English-language programming ofRadio Sweden is made bySR International[23] onEutelsat 9A, and was formerly syndicated onWRN, which is available on Sky and WRN's website. The programme itself is run by a mixture of Swedes and Britons including Richard Orange and Loukas Christodoulou.[24] All the services are available to be streamed on the respective websites of the BBC and SR, and available on podcast libraries such asiTunes.
For television, theBBC World News is available in Sweden on many platforms includingBoxerTV, Viasat andCom Hem. Other BBC channels includingBBC Earth,BBC Lifestyle and theBBC Knowledge channels which include a mixture of programmes from the BBC's archive are available on various Swedish satellite, cable and IPTV services. Until 2017 Swedes living in the UK had access to SVT's international channelSVT World onEutelsat 9 and IPTV; this has been replaced by a limited selection of programmes on the on-demand service onSVT Play. On the other hand, people in Sweden cannot access the BBC's on-demand serviceiplayer as it is completelygeo-blocked.
Many British television formats, especially reality television, have been broadcast in Sweden, includingPop Idol(Idol),The X Factor (X Factor),I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (Kändisdjungeln),MasterChef (Sveriges mästerkock),The Great British Bake-Off (Hela Sverige bakar) andThe Supersizers go... (Historieätarna). Sweden also unusually copies a radio format in the popular comedy radio showJust a Minute (På minuten). The only time a Swedish format was brought over to the UK wasExpedition Robinson (Survivor UK), although there have been suggestions ofMelodifestivalen being brought over to improve British chances to win theEurovision Song Contest.
Various British TV shows are shown on Swedish public and commercial television including drama such asDownton Abbey andHappy Valley, comedy such asKeeping Up Appearances (Skenet bedrar), soap operas such asEmmerdale (Hem till gården) and documentaries such asThe Blue Planet. Programmes are generallysubtitled rather than dubbed, except for those aimed at children. Much of this is because the cost of making programming is high in Sweden, and it is often convenient to import programming from abroad.
The phenomenon ofNordic Noir has led to a number of Swedish dramas to being broadcast on British television, includingBron (The Bridge) andWallander; in the latter case aBritish version of the programme, was produced, with a British cast filmed in Sweden. The Swedish Christmas classicSagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton (Christopher's Christmas Mission) was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987, withBernard Cribbins as the narrator and English dubbing. Conversely the British farceDinner for One (Grevinnan och betjänten), little known in the UK, has been broadcast onSVT for over thirty years.
The UK and Sweden have largeestablishment Protestant churches, with theLutheranChurch of Sweden,AnglicanChurch of England andPresbyterianChurch of Scotland. Although they are noted for theirirreligious nature, withchurch attendance being low with around 5% in Sweden and 20% in the UK. They have large numbers ofatheists andagnostics at 43% in Sweden and 26% in the UK. In 2011, the Northern European Lutheran and Anglican churches created a mutual agreement of thePorvoo Communion, which links the two groups of churches together which includes the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, theChurch of Ireland,the Church in Wales & theEpiscopalian Church of Scotland.
London is home of the Ulrike Eleanora Church, which is the city's Swedish Church on Harcourt Street,Marylebone.[25] It comes under theDiocese of Visby, which deals with theChurch of Sweden Abroad. It is part of the group of theNordic churches in the UK, which is informal group including the Danish, Norwegian and Finnish churches in London. Every year on the Friday evening closeness to 13 December, the church organises aSt Lucia concert either inSt Paul's Cathedral orWestminster Cathedral which a major part of the Swedish community's calendar. They also organise an annualChristmas market on the weekend before advent, selling Swedish Christmas-ware.
Stockholm is home to an Anglican church,St Peter and St Sigfrid's Church, known locally as the "English Church" ("Engelska kyrkan"). It was built in the 1860s and was moved to its present location on Dag Hammarskjöldsväg inÖstermalm in 1913.[26] Gothenburg also has an Anglican church, St Andrew's, which is located in the city centre.[27] Both churches are within the Archdiocese of Germany and Northern Europe and are administered by theDiocese of Gibraltar in Europe.
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